Twice, in electrifying fashion, the stars lit up Home Depot Center for the Galaxy in their 2-0 win over San Jose before an announced sellout crowd of 27,000.

Yet there’s always a party pooper somewhere, and Galaxy coach Ruud Gullit indulged himself in crediting the likes of rookie defenders Sean Franklin and Brandon McDonald rather than David Beckham and Landon Donovan.

“Everybody always asks me about David and about Landon,” Gullit said after his first victory. “Everybody knows them already, so therefore it’s important for me to talk about the other players who have done extremely well.”

OK, great, Coach.

It was Beckham, taking a perfect pass from Donovan in stride and effortlessly guiding it through goalkeeper Joe Cannon’s legs for a 1-0 lead only eight minutes into the game that had the place rocking.

Finally, in his seventh game with the Galaxy, Beckham had his first MLS goal, and timing it for a night that MLS commissioner Don Garber happened to be in the house. The guy might be worth a couple million after all.

It was Donovan beating defender Ryan Cochrane to Beckham’s chipped lob pass from midfield, then flicking a shot over Cannon and into the net in the 37th minute, that kept the crowd roaring.

A goal and assist from their two luminaries wasn’t the only big news for the Galaxy. They erased the taste of the Ruud Awakening they received in the opener in Colorado, a 4-0 loss to the Rapids that made the visitors look like a dumbfounded expansion team.

“The energy level was totally different tonight than it was last week,” Beckham said. “We spoke about the altitude in the first game, but the blame can’t go on that. Tonight we were more relaxed going into the game. Last week we were tense and maybe nerves set in.

“I think what changed is our positional play. In the first game we were all over the place, from right in the back to midfield to up front. We were all out of position in different stages of the game.”

This time, it was expansion San Jose getting the treatment in the Earthquakes’ rebirth two years after the original franchise hiked off to Houston.

“We were all a little embarrassed after Saturday,” Donovan said. “It was good to have a game quickly and we worked this week on one, a better attitude; and two, tactically – the way we were going to be and the way we were going to move as a team. I think it paid off.”

The Earthquakes have former Galaxy coach Frank Yallop leading them, but about all he could say in this game would have been something like “Why couldn’t Becks have done that for us last year?”

On the other sidelines, Gullit, sitting alongside first-year assistant Cobi Jones, was far more relaxed as they found some structure after that dreadful opener. The improvement came without defender Abel Xavier (suspension) and forward Carlos Ruiz, who underwent knee surgery Tuesday.